The Effect of Conservatism on Cost of Capital: MENA Evidence

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic consequences of accounting conservatism in Middle Eastern and North Africa (MENA) economies. In particular, motivated by the lack of empirical tests concerning economic effects of conservatism in MENA countries, the paper examines the impact of conditional conservatism on firms’ cost of equity capital and the effect of two mechanisms of conservatism: bad news recognition and good news recognition on cost of equity. The firm-year measure of conditional conservatism is calculated using Khan and Watts’ (2009) model and the cost of equity capital is computed based on Estrada’s (2000) approach. As predicted, we find evidence of a negative relation between conditional conservatism and cost of equity capital using a sample of companies pertaining to MENA emerging markets. We also find that the two mechanisms of conservatism reduce the cost of equity capital. The finding of this paper can be used by standard-setters to review their opinion about the beneficial effect of conservatism. This study presents the first attempt in MENA countries to provide empirical evidence on the effect of conditional conservatism on the cost of equity capital.